Fight or flight response to the daily media bombardment of our lives with fake threats

It is possible to become extremely weary of the current climate of hysteria, conspiracy theories, arrogance, paranoia, continual anger, hostility and the sowing of divisiveness everywhere one turns. The media should be very careful moving forward, not to foment divisiveness and hysteria at every juncture. It simply is not healthy to live each day in 'fight or flight' mode in response to anger, threats or stress. Adrenaline (epinephrine) levels rise and lead to rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, anxiety, excessive sweating and palpitations, among others. This response is necessary when we are faced with real threats where we need to escape in order to survive. But when we watch tv, read newspapers or look at other media that cause us constant anger and stress, we open ourselves to a lot of unnecessary health problems. 

There are so many irritating situations and people that abound these days. The media latch on to them and blow them up or out of proportion. They exaggerate their importance. Their readers or viewers end up yelling at the tv or becoming angry at what they read in the newspapers, and they anger and irritate family members who have null desire to be sucked into that black hole of anger on a daily basis. Each day, we allow media versions of the daily miseries around us, to invade our living rooms. Each day, we allow ourselves to get angry, stressed, confused, hysterical, and our bodies thank us by raising our levels of adrenaline and cortisol so that we can fight the threats. The problem is that this daily practice leads to unhealthy bodies. We can't be constantly on the alert for threats. Like adrenaline, cortisol is also produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol narrows the arteries, while adrenaline increases the heart rate. The combined effect of both hormones is to make the heart pump harder. Another effect of cortisol is to stimulate fat and carbohydrate metabolism to provide energy for the body in threatening situations, which can in turn increase appetite. Weight gain and elevated cortisol levels can often go hand in hand. It makes sense that these are not physiological states that one would want to experience often during each day in response to 'fake' threats. 

The media may say they are interested in presenting the facts, but even the few that try to live up to that ideal do make serious mistakes or find that their journalists are not always ethical human beings. 'Fact-based' stories can end up being anything but. I am fed up with newspapers that do not wish to be labeled tabloid newspapers, yet their headlines are nothing more than click bait. The editors know that the online versions of their newspapers will garner many views if they include click bait headlines. So they do. This doesn't make them ethical, it makes them greedy. It shows me that they are only interested in beating their competition. They're not really interested in the truth. They're part of the problem, since they help to create anger, divisiveness, and conspiracy theories in the quest for money. Greed is the root of all evil. Greed is the root of the insanity we are witness to in our present societies. 

Let's rid our daily lives of the fake threats. I am slowly reaching the point where I no longer want to know what is going on in the world on a daily basis. I'm happier not knowing. If I need to stay updated, I can briefly skim an online version of Reuters or the BBC, where the hysteria is kept to a minimum. And an added benefit is that I don't have to see too many headlines about celebrities doing stupid things or making stupid pronouncements about things they know nothing about. Because that's another thing I'm fairly fed up with--the entire celebrity culture. I simply don't care about any of them. They're no better than any of us, they're just richer, and as such, also represent the insane quest for money that permeates our societies. 

Quotes about ethics

Ethics are moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity (definition from an online dictionary). Given the utter lack of ethics that abound in American politics at present, I thought some reminders about ethics, in the form of quotations by different individuals, some well-known and some not, would be relevant. Perhaps just reading some of them will re-inspire politicians to want to behave ethically. We need all the help we can get.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics. --Henry Paulson

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings. --Albert Schweitzer

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life. --Albert Schweitzer

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. --Albert Schweitzer

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. --Thomas A. Edison

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. --Albert Camus

That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals. --Peter Singer

Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar. --D. H. Lawrence

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. --Potter Stewart

Apart from values and ethics which I have tried to live by, the legacy I would like to leave behind is a very simple one - that I have always stood up for what I consider to be the right thing, and I have tried to be as fair and equitable as I could be. --Ratan Tata

You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example. --Judy Sheindlin

Great people have great values and great ethics. --Jeffrey Gitomer

Amid the din, the need for silence

If there is one thing I will remember about the pandemic in 2020, it would be noise. The year was noisy, full of the sounds of boring, drilling, hammering, chopping, sanding floors, heavy construction, renovation, vacuuming, loud radios playing while all of the above occurred, and the loud coarse voices of the construction workers to accompany it all. It seems as though every apartment in our co-op complex decided to embark on some type of renovation project. It’s been a super annoying year in that respect. Apartments to the left of us, over us, under us. This is what the pandemic has wrought—young couples with money to burn, ripping out kitchens that are under three years old to put in new trendy state-of-the-art kitchens (that no longer even resemble kitchens), knocking down walls to create open spaces, moving kitchens to where the bedrooms used to be, and so on. Nowadays, the sky’s the limit when it comes to apartment design. There’s nothing you can’t do, it seems (except knock down a support wall). The problem of course is that someone’s kitchen ends up being situated over someone else’s bedroom. Or someone’s extended bathroom ends up situated over someone else’s walk-in closet. It’s a mess of rooms; no one really knows where bedrooms or kitchens will be located from apartment to apartment; it’s anyone’s guess.

2021 will hopefully be a less noisy year. But there is no guarantee. Last week and this week saw the installation of new fire alarm equipment in the hallways of our co-op complex—with the attendant drilling and boring through concrete to run new electrical cables from basement to attic. Working at home has been and is a challenge when faced with this kind of noise and last year’s noise. During the spring and summer I could take refuge in my garden, where there is peace to be found. The only noises there are the buzzing of the bumblebees and the chattering of the birds. Those are sounds I love.

I read recently in the NY Times that marine life is dealing with a similar problem—unbearable ocean noise (In the Oceans, the Volume Is Rising as Never Before - The New York Times (nytimes.com). The article states “But humans — and their ships, seismic surveys, air guns, pile drivers, dynamite fishing, drilling platforms, speedboats and even surfing — have made the ocean an unbearably noisy place for marine life”. It doesn’t surprise me that this is a problem at sea, when it is a huge problem on land. Again, I conclude that many human beings are uncomfortable with quiet, because when they experience quiet, they might begin to think and reflect upon the state of their lives, and they can’t abide that. Better to have the television on 24/7, or the radio, or to have their earphones on listening to music on their smart phones. Whatever can distract them from the unbearable experience of getting to know themselves.

Not me. I want quiet, I crave quiet. I crave the absence of noise. I look forward to the day when the boring, drilling, hammering, chopping, sanding floors, heavy construction, renovation, vacuuming, loud radios playing while all of the above occurred, and the loud coarse voices of the construction workers, come to an end. I will pop open a bottle of champagne and happily listen to the cork popping and not much else. I will rejoice in the silence. I will raise my glass in a toast to the silence.

 

Today's guest blogger--Mary Jo Johnson--writing about tools for organizing your workday

Guest author--Mary Jo Johnson

This article is published by paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no based on a Content Marketing Partnership with the author Mary Jo Johnson. 

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5 Best Tools that Make Organization at Work a Breeze

Organizing your workday can be very tricky. Whether you belong to a big or small enterprise, getting through the gamut of workday tasks will always have its challenges. With the popularity of remote work gaining a strong foothold in today’s “new normal,” managing your workload while making sure that everyone stays connected and on top of things has become twice as hard. 

It can be a bear trying to get everyone on the same page. Too many tasks, meetings and collaboration, new information coming in daily, new employees joining, old ones leaving, trying to preserve and update knowledge within the company — how do you not get lost in the chaos?

Luckily, there are tools out there geared towards organizing your work and helping you run your workday more efficiently. There are hundreds of them floating around the interwebs and you can get lost in the chaotic list of organizational tools, ironically enough. So how do you choose the right one for you?

Choosing the right tool

First, you will need to take stock of what you have and what you need. What kind of service are you looking for? Are the tools you found equipped with the features you need in your organization? Compile a list of possible apps that might be useful for you. 

Second, once you've compiled a list of possible organizational tools that you might use, consider their ability to address all the things that you need them to do for you. If you can find just one tool to do all the organizational tasks you need to be done, then why get two or three separate tools to do what one platform can do?

Third, read up on the reviews. You’ll need to hear what actual clients have to say about the tools you are considering. Feedback is a key component to an informed decision; and once you’ve picked the tool/s you need, return the favor and write an honest and constructive review. 

Fourth, test them out. You really won’t know if the tool will work the way you envisioned it if you don’t try it out. Go through your picklist and take the tools for a test drive. Put them through the tasks you need them to run and see how well they hold up or how fast and efficiently they can accomplish those tasks for you. 

So now that you have the initial steps in choosing the perfect organizational tool for you, let’s delve into our list of tools (our absolute top favorites!) that we think might just be what you need.

The Best Organizational Tools for Work

Trello

Let’s start our list with Trello. This is a project management and organizational tool that uses task cards and project boards. This tool allows you to write down your daily tasks into virtual cards, assign due dates, and add attachments. You can invite your team and assign tasks to them, as well. 

Their project boards allow you to put your visualizations into an organized platform where you can monitor your project’s progress. You can collaborate with your team regardless of where each of you is based. It is very easy to use, and best of all, Trello syncs across all your devices. 

Slab

As their headline says, Slab is a “knowledge base that democratizes knowledge.” It’s a nifty tool that lets you create, store, and organize your data. It also integrates well with your existing tools, so there would be no need to replace your stack and relay new instructions to team members. Its Unified Search feature allows you to pull any needed data from any of your existing tools. Sweet, right? This shaves off time trying to remember which tool has what data. Another useful feature is Slab Topics, which not only organizes data into folders and tags, but also provides relevant context for easier browsing, learning, and transferring of knowledge within the company.

It also offers dozens of templates from industry leaders to get you inspired and give you ideas一so whether it’s onboarding new employees, documenting weekly team meetings, or creating user manuals, Slab has an extensive library of templates designed for your organizational needs.

And a bonus: it’s easy enough to use that creating and organizing can be done even by the least savvy members in your organization.

ProjectManager.com

If you manage large and diverse teams, you might want to consider ProjectManager.com. This award-winning tool has over a thousand integrations including Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Google Apps. 

It has Gantt charts, kanban boards, and task lists. They have project management software, planning tools, and project dashboards among other things. You can collaborate and plan projects with your team quickly and easily. It works on both PC and Mac and doesn’t need any downloads or complex installations. 

Box

Box is one of the most secure cloud storage services available today. You can choose with whom you want to share your files. You can store all your confidential business information into the Box Drive and rest easy that it will remain secure. 

It is also integrated into Mac Finder and Windows Explorer so you can use it in both Windows PC and Mac. You can edit any file, even CAD, in your browser and it will automatically be saved to Box. 

The app itself takes up little disk space. It allows sharing large files without having to download anything. You can just share the link to your files with your team. It doesn’t bog down your systems with large downloads, and it allows for easy and real-time collaboration within your team. 

Microsoft OneNote 

If your company has a subscription to Office 365, you most likely have access to Microsoft OneNote, a great and secure collaboration tool that organizations can utilize in project management, process improvement, and daily operations. OneNote is ideal for managing projects with members in multiple locations as the tool allows real-time correspondence and feedback. 

A feature called SharePoint allows teams to create their own “wiki” and organize and store large amounts of information in one place, making streamlining ideas and resources easier for everyone. 

Conclusion

No matter how busy you get or how chaotic your workdays seem to become, there is always a tool, or several, out there that can help you keep your tasks and schedules organized. These things are there to make your work a lot easier, your collaborations more fun, and your team engaged no matter where each of you is based. All you need to do is find the right tools that will work for you. 

Friendships and a similar core of moral decency

I get it. Everyone is tired, mentally and physically, after a year of nothing but Covid-19 pandemic news and one of the most divisive and destructive presidential elections in American history. Tempers are frayed, patience is thin, and energy levels are low. I am experiencing all of these things, and I know others are too. The toughest thing to deal with has not been the pandemic, strangely enough, but the sadness of coming to terms with the realization that there are friends and acquaintances that I really no longer want to know or have in my life. I just don’t know how to tell them so I haven’t for the time being. The friends were never close friends, but they belong to an earlier time in my life, and at that time, they were kind people—kind to me and kind to others. We reconnected on Facebook after many years of no contact. The people they are now could not be described as kind. I would rather describe them as hard-hearted, cynical, critical, and mean. Unfortunately, they were and still are Trump supporters who bought into the ‘Stop the steal’ conspiracy and all of the other nonsensical conspiracy theories that abound. They won’t condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene for her wild and divisive rhetoric and nonsensical viewpoints. They won’t condemn the hoisting of the Confederate flag in the Capitol building during the Capitol invasion. Heck, they haven’t condemned the invasion itself, and that by itself is cause for concern. They are still posting aggressive and bullying posts on social media that push the 'election was stolen' conspiracy, that Biden is a terrible person--the entire package. 

As I recently wrote to a friend of mine, I want friends whose core of moral decency is similar to mine. I don’t have much time for anything else the older I get. Good friends challenge us to see the other sides of issues, but in a positive way, not in a mean-spirited or negatively critical way. Not in a bullying way. If they love us and like us, they will not be ‘in-your-face’ aggressive toward us. If they love us, they will not be deliberately unkind or mean to us. You are rude, mean or aggressive to people you don’t really like; you don’t have to be, but if you are, it’s because you don’t like them. If you say you love or like someone, then you will strive to treat them well, to be nice, to be respectful, to be positive when criticizing them—all those things that make up common moral decency. Yes, we can be tired or exhausted, but the old adage, ‘count to ten’ rather than say something you might regret, is very applicable for situations that can annoy us with loved ones. How much do you value the relationship you have with others? Continual rudeness, aggressiveness, unkindness or deliberately provoking or needling others are simply ways of telling them that they don’t matter to us, that they are of little value to us.  

One long scream

Some people will assume that this is a Covid-19 post because of the title, but it’s not. The pandemic is a part of what I write about, but it’s not the sole focus. One long scream has been building for years in many workplaces, not just mine. But during the past decade, life in my workplace changed irrevocably for many. As in, there was no going back to what was, only moving forward to what could be. The focus became the future. The past was never talked about; the history of my department, how it came to be the way it was, was unimportant. Those of us old enough to remember the past, or who had worked there long enough to know about it, were told that it wasn’t important; no one wanted to hear about it. The present was just ignored in favor of the future. But the present was what needed to be dealt with, except that no one knew how to deal with it or wanted to deal with it because the problems were too many. So it was ignored in favor of all the fancy buzzwords, slogans and catch phrases that would create the future that ‘everyone wanted’ or said was important to have for the sake of productivity and effectiveness. When we were children that was called ‘let’s pretend’.

I don’t mind playing let’s pretend. It’s just that let’s pretend has gone on for many years, and has worn down those employees who tried as hard as they could to implement the many changes and trends that were laid on the table and prioritized. The problem was that there were too many changes and trends, and one could never be certain which change or trend was the one to be prioritized, since priorities shifted on a monthly basis. Courses in how to lead were important, but they didn’t produce better leaders. They produced leaders who were only interested in forcing their employees to adapt to change for change’s sake. There were never good explanations for why this or that change or trend was important. Employees who were resistant or critical were pushed aside, and are still pushed aside, in favor of those who are receptive to every change or trend that gets suggested. It doesn’t matter if the changes or trends cause a lot of upheaval, waste time, are ineffective, or lead to demotivated employees. The leaders and their loyal employees continue on, while those who are critical find it harder and harder with each change to start over and plod on, dreading the next major change, the next trend to attack the workplace that its leaders will embrace warmly and force down the throats of their employees. The pandemic has brought to light how stupid some of these trends that workplaces adopted without question actually are. One of them is packing as many employees as possible into tiny offices, with little room to move or to spread out. Another stupid trend is open office landscapes—placing an entire workforce into one large room, no individual offices, no dividers, no cubicles, no privacy, no quiet time, constant distractions, and a lot of noise. The party line was that open office landscapes were conducive to interaction, communication and collaboration. Employees should embrace them without question. The reality was something else entirely. Most employees want and need some private time, some quiet time, at work. That’s the purpose of offices—one can close a door and shut out the noise if one needs time to think. But that was no longer ‘allowed’. The reason for open office landscapes, as we all know if we cut through the piles of bullshit that have built up, is to save money. Workplaces save money by forcing their employees to sit in one large room together. The pandemic however, has shown just how stupid this trend is. Suddenly the hunt is on to find new solutions for dealing with this problem—the spread of Covid-19 (or any virus for that matter)—in an open office landscape setting. So the solution has been to tell employees to work from home if they can. That must really rub some leaders the wrong way; after all, they lose the ability to totally control their employees. I’ve seen other solutions that have to do with erecting Plexiglas dividers between adjacent desks, or enclosing individual desks in Plexiglas cubicles. It seems to be a return to some kind of individual office thinking. Dare one hope? Can one dream?

I’ve come to the conclusion that leaders and employees who can shift from one change to the next, from one trend to the next, without problems, are surface skaters. They are not interested in depth; it’s unclear what they are really interested in except control. They should be interested in depth; they should be listening to their employees. Because not to do so is simply to invite trouble. Some few do at present. But most do not. They have their visions and preferred ways of doing things, and they simply expect employees to fall in line. After a decade of multiple leaders, multiple leadership styles, fragmentary visions, shifting priorities, stupid changes, stupid trends, wasted time, wasted breath, useless meetings, endless budget cuts (to no avail), poor strategies, poor planning, yet more meetings to undo what was decided upon two or three years ago that took up valuable employee time—some employees experience only one feeling—the desire to scream into the wind, into the boundless future that was promised them, the golden land of promise and opportunity, the utopian landscape, where all workplaces are effective and productive, where all work output can be measured and controlled, where all employees can be controlled. It’s one long scream, a primal scream, a plea really for a return to sanity and to peace, a plea for a return to a time when freedom from control was still to be found in a workplace.

The Catholic church and Trump

I correspond at Christmastime with a friend from my college years who just happens to be a Catholic priest. This year we’ve gone back and forth since Christmas due to his support of, and my lack of support of, Trump for president. It surprised me that he was a Trump supporter, but I’m finding out that a good number of Catholic priests supported Trump for president, and rallied for him from their pulpits. I’m also finding out that this did not sit so well with many of their parishioners who could taste and smell the hypocrisy of this blatant support of a man who basically has little to no understanding of Christian principles and behavior. I am not trying to change my friend’s mind, but I want to present the other side, as it were, because it strikes me that the Catholic Church doesn’t really pay much attention to or listen to its followers. Perhaps it doesn’t need to do so, but I think it would behove them to do so.

The American Catholic church’s blatant support of Trump has upset many parishioners who react to the hypocrisy--how we as normal Catholics have been told for years to ‘abide by the laws of the church, to avoid adultery, to not steal, to not worship idols, to follow the commandments’. Sex outside of and before marriage are mortal sins according to my priest friend, therefore adultery must also be. Yet Trump was held up as a savior of the USA in many Catholic churches, because he is (presumably) anti-abortion. He is also a liar, a cheater, an adulterer, but those sins were not discussed from the pulpit. Yet priests have been lecturing about the evils of sexual immorality for years when it pertains to normal married couples and young people. Yet during the entire pedophile scandal, there was not one peep from the pulpit about the crimes of pedophile priests, how they belonged in jail, how they had betrayed the loyalty and confidence that parishioners had in them. Likewise with Trump--no criticism of him, only held up as savior. Cardinal Dolan in NYC was/is also a Trump supporter, and he has been criticized roundly for failing to acknowledge how parishioners felt about this: (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/05/04/cardinal-dolans-praise-president-trump-was-pastoral-failure). People who are staunch Catholics, who go to mass every Sunday, who pray and read Catholic literature--are quite upset about the utter hypocrisy they are witness to, as I am. The Church will surely endure, but it lost many followers due to the pedophile scandal, and perhaps its support of Trump will result in the same. The Church can say that it is no problem to lose followers, but perhaps it should still take a look at why they leave. The reasons are not always frivolous, as is often stated by well-meaning priests who have their heads in the sand.

And just as a reminder to those who thought otherwise, the Church was forced to deal with the pedophile scandal by external organs and institutions. It did not seem as though they took it seriously enough, at least in the beginning. They reassigned pedophile priests to other parishes. They wished to deal with it as an internal matter, and it is not. Pedophilia is a crime. The children who were victimized were hushed up, pushed aside, and held down by church leaders who knew what would happen if the truth came out. These children did not choose to be ‘victims’ of evil behavior. Neither did their parents.

I have never particularly identified with any societal group. I don’t trust group mentalities, and that includes blind loyalty to any religion. I am not blindly loyal to science either. My loyalty is to God and Jesus Christ. I will speak up when I see wrongdoing, as do many Catholics. We don’t interpret Christ’s words ourselves; we read the Bible and know what we have been taught through the years. After many years of Catholic education and churchgoing, we can at least do that. Apart from the pope when he speaks “ex Cathedra” about matters of faith and morals, the clergy are human and fallible. My father always made the point that the church was a human institution, founded by Christ, yes, but run by men; I believe that GK Chesterton made the same point. Priests are human beings first, and fallible like the rest of us.  

Trump is not a good example for children, nor for marital partners be they male or female. I know both married male and female Trump supporters. There is nothing Christian about one partner in any marriage spewing out his or her belligerence and aggression toward their families who don’t share their blind worship of Trump, who don’t want to listen to their constant daily screaming about socialism and the end of America. Trump is not holding a gun to these people’s heads and telling them to behave this way. But they bought into his hype. Misery loves company. Trump’s anger and frustration with his own life have seeped into the minds of these people in an insidious way. They are not poor, downtrodden or victims. Trump is no longer president, and they are still spewing their rage and frustration. They are acting as though they have been victimized and that the country will go down the drain with Biden--illegal immigrants flooding into the country, taking jobs away from Americans, etc. etc. Who has ‘victimized’ these people, I ask? They are privileged beyond their wildest dreams--they own their own homes, several cars, they have hobbies and they travel, they eat out, they have good jobs and good incomes. What the heck is wrong with them? They should know better. 

If there is a role for the Catholic Church in all this, it is to support a ‘live and let live’ philosophy. Or a ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ philosophy. Isn’t that what we are called to do as Christians? It doesn’t mean that we have to necessarily like everything about our neighbors or other cultures, but ‘do no harm’ is a good mantra. My view of Christian behavior is for the most part shaped by my parents, who tried to live a Christian life as best they could. If they had their prejudices, they kept the basest of them to themselves, as I wish most people would do. I don’t want to listen to you spew your bile and your hatred. That’s MY prerogative. My soul will be forever glad for my parents’ good example. My mother always said ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’. She also said ‘you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’. I do believe that Trump could have learned something from my mother and my father about how to behave.