Bob Schwartz

I say, “Please don’t talk to strangers, baby”
But she always do
She say, “I’ll talk to strangers if I want to
‘Cause I’m a stranger, too”
Randy Newman, Have You Seen My Baby?

Elizabeth Bernstein writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The Surprising Boost You Get From Strangers
Sometimes a stranger—not a friend or a loved one—can significantly improve our day, providing comfort or helping to broaden our perspective

Sometimes a stranger—not a friend or a loved one—can significantly improve our day. A pleasant encounter with someone we don’t know, even a nonverbal one, can soothe us when no one else is around. It may get us out of our own head—a proven mood booster—and help broaden our perspective.

“People feel more connected when they talk to strangers, like they are part of something bigger,” says Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist and senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex, in Colchester, England, who studies interactions between strangers.

In research studies, Dr. Sandstrom has shown that people’s moods improve after they have a conversation with a Starbucks barista or a volunteer at the Tate Modern art museum in London. She’s also found that people are happier on days when they have more interactions with acquaintances they don’t know well and that students enjoy class more when they interact with their classmates.

And yet most people resist talking to strangers, she says. They fret about the mechanics of the conversation—how to start, maintain or stop it. They think they will blather on and disclose too much—or not talk enough. They worry they will bore the other person.

They’re typically wrong. Dr. Sandstrom’s research shows people underestimate how much another person will like them when they talk for the first time. And in a study in which she asked participants to talk to at least one stranger a day for five days, 99% said they found at least one of the conversations pleasantly surprising, 82% said they learned something from one of the strangers, 43% exchanged contact information, and 40% had communicated with one of the strangers again, an indication they might be making friends.

Scientists believe there may be an ancient reason why humans enjoy interacting with strangers. To survive as a species, we need to mate outside our own gene pool, so we may have evolved to have both the social skills and the motivation to interact with people who are not in our tribe.

You don’t even have to talk to complete strangers to reap the benefits. Multiple studies show that people who interact regularly with passing acquaintances, or who engage with others through community groups, religious gatherings or volunteer opportunities, have better emotional and physical health and live longer than people who do not. The researchers believe that engaging with someone we don’t know well is more cognitively challenging than interacting with loved ones: Rather than use the verbal shorthand that develops in close relationships, we have to speak in full sentences, engaging more of our brain.

Why do we enjoy talking to people we don’t know? An encounter with a stranger, when pleasant, fulfills four basic human needs, according to Rachel Kazez, a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago, who advises her patients to talk to strangers when they are feeling low. It gives us a sense of control, because we can choose whether to talk or not, and how much information we disclose.

We feel connected—it can sometimes be easier to open up and have an intimate conversation with a stranger because we know we won’t see that person again. We get to feel capable, because they don’t know our insecurities or setbacks. And the encounter may give us a sense of meaning or purpose, especially because a stranger doesn’t have to be nice to us.

“If you are feeling lonely and have a nice interaction with a stranger on a bus, you can suddenly feel like: ‘Oh, I fit in. I’m part of this city,’ ” Ms. Kazez says.

Trump wants credit for the current U.S. economy, which he claims to have single-handedly made great. Despite broad and imprecise indicators such as GDP, unemployment rate and the stock market, the truth is that the economy is fragile for many—and not helped by the craziest and most undisciplined economic leadership in modern American history.

Here is one more sign of just how fragile.

Wall Street Journal:

One-Third of Middle Class Can’t Afford $400 Surprise Expense, Fed Finds
Many U.S. adults remain in position of ‘financial fragility’ despite ‘marginally’ improved economic security, central banker says

By Lalita Clozel
May 10, 2019

WASHINGTON—One-third of middle-class American adults couldn’t afford a $400 surprise expense, and some 6% also couldn’t manage such a cost even by borrowing money or selling something, a soon-to-publish Federal Reserve survey of household economics is expected to conclude. The middle class was defined as households with between $40,000 and $85,000 in annual income in 2018.

Fed Gov. Lael Brainard said in a speech Friday that the Fed’s 2018 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, expected to be released later this month, would show that while economic security has been “marginally” improving, many U.S. citizens—both in- and outside the middle class—were still in a position of “financial fragility.”

Americans’ widespread inability to shoulder an emergency expense “is something that is very pronounced in recent years, and we should be taking a hard look at it,” Ms. Brainard said. “It’s still a pretty large percentage of our respondents who find it difficult…to meet what may seem like relatively manageable expenses.”

Financial security is “one important marker of middle-class living standards,” Ms. Brainard added, speaking at a Fed community development conference. “Wealth is a very important source of resilience, allowing households to handle unexpected expenses to manage the usual changes in income over a lifetime.”

Many people in the middle class rely on credit cards to cover unexpected costs, Ms. Brainard said. Nearly 3 in 10 middle-income adults carry a credit-card balance most or all of the time, the Fed governor said. Those households are five times as likely to borrow if faced with a $400 expense as those who never carry a balance, she added.

Do you want a government that gives you what you want most of the time? Or do you want a government that because of democratic principles sometimes—maybe often—goes against your wishes?

Lawful democracy doesn’t always go your way. But if you find an authoritarian who almost always agrees with your position, would that really be so bad?

Apparently in America right now, a substantial number want to get their way, and are willing to lean authoritarian, even if the democratic rule of law suffers. Americans have virtually no experience with this, and certainly not at the highest federal level. The worst case scenarios that seemed to some mere paranoid concerns are becoming even worse realities. There are supposed to be correcting mechanism available, but we suddenly see that those mechanisms take time, and more importantly, depend on the good will of those working the machines. Good will, prudence and integrity that we are discovering may be missing.

To those who love history, the saving grace is that you are getting to live through singularly historic times. To those who are young enough to see another generation or two, you will be able to tell your children and grandchildren that you were around when an all-time constitutional clash—the battle for American democracy—took place. Let’s hope you will be allowed to tell the whole story, and that you will be believed and not dismissed as the purveyor of fake history.

Something

you have to say something
even if and though nothing
you have to do something
even if and though nothing
you have to think something
even if and though nothing
the moment demands that
the smart and swift
the stupid and still
pick up and lay down
their thoughts words and deeds
to pick them up and lay them down
endlessly again

©

I stood at the front of the room. I shouldn’t be standing there, I realized, as if I was the teacher, and they my students. It was upside down.

I had called them together, the wisdom teachers I had followed over the years. They had no choice but to come and sit in their chairs. This was my assembly.

Some had identifiable names and lives, most historical and actual, but a few apocryphal. Others were general, not a particular person, but a tradition or text.

Many traditions and sub-traditions were represented: Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and others. Within each tradition, no teacher could claim primacy, no superstars versus stars. There was Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. There was Jesus and Thomas Merton. There was Dogen and Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Among themselves they might make distinctions. But as teachers who had all given me something significant, they were all at parity.

Were they talking with each other or to me? No. They sat silently, looking at me with calm intensity, waiting for me to answer the unasked question: why had I called them all together?

I did have a reason. But now I wondered if I should ask. The question was whether it was time to give up my practice of drawing wisdom from any and all of them, like a hummingbird feeding from an array of beautiful flowers. Instead, I wanted to know, should I focus on one to the exclusion of the others.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask, because I knew, or thought I knew, what they might say. What a stupid question. Or: You already know the answer. Or: There is no answer. Or: What a stupid question. Or, in the case of a Zen teacher who clung to the old ways, I might be beaten with a stick. And deserve it.

I dismissed the venerable assembly. With thanks.