"His daughter Lana... recalls flying to Austin to visit Nelson and failing to recognize him until her son shouted, 'That’s Grandpa!'"

"The last time she’d seen him, in Nashville, he had short hair and wore country-club clothes. Now he had long hair and a beard and wore a T-shirt, a bandanna, and an earring. 'He went from jazz musician to hippie,' she said. In Texas, Nelson cut back on the drinking. His face thinned out. His features sharpened. He ran five miles a day through the Hill Country, practiced martial arts, kept smoking weed—it tamped the rage down, he said—and read spiritual tracts and 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' People who killed the mood didn’t stay in his orbit for long. 'Somewhere along the way, I realized that you have to imagine what you want and then get out of the way and let it happen,' he told me."

From "How Willie Nelson Sees America/On the road with the musician, his band, and his family" (The New Yorker).

"Anyone who has read or heard about Dale Carnegie’s 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' knows that charm follows a formula..."

"... (mainly, offer specific praise and focus on the other person’s problems rather than your own concerns). A.I. agents run these scripts better than we can. They 'are really good at making you feel seen,' [said Rob Brooks, 'an evolutionary biologist who set out recently to test A.I.’s ability to play on our social instincts, wrote that his Replika chatbot always wants to hear about his day, asks great follow-up questions and "really gets me."']... With each generation of innovation, A.I. gets better at manipulating human 'algorithms': the impulses that we share with our fellow primates, especially our desire to like and be liked, just as chimpanzees groom one another to strengthen social bonds...."

From "Charisma Rules the World" by Molly Worthen. Worthen, a historian, wrote a book called "Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History From the Puritans to Donald Trump."

"Mr. Trump’s abrasive personal style and love of chaos are the opposite of a Replika chatbot’s soothing, frictionless responses. Yet both appeal in our secular, disconnected age, when many Americans choose to sit alone scrolling TikTok conspiracy theories instead of joining live human beings in a church, school board meeting, bowling league, Scout troop or any of the other depopulated relics of an earlier, more connected time.... Compared with the sense of purpose and identity that past generations found in sturdy communities, now 'it’s very difficult to tell the story of who you are and what you’re doing,' Dr. Kommers said. 'Psychology and A.I. don’t have a way to help us with that. That’s one of the reasons there’s this pervasive feeling that technology doesn’t make our lives better.'"

Alexinomia.

"People who feel it most severely might avoid addressing anyone by their name under any circumstance. For others, alexinomia is strongest around those they are closest to. For example, I don’t have trouble with most names, but when my sister and I are alone together, saying her name can feel odd and embarrassing, as if I’m spilling a secret, even though I’ve been saying her name for nearly 25 years. Some people can’t bring themselves to say the name of their wife or boyfriend or best friend—it can feel too vulnerable, too formal, or too plain awkward."

From "Please Don’t Make Me Say My Boyfriend’s Name/Why calling loved ones by their name is strangely awkward" (The Atlantic).

I feel this, though not severely. I'm glad to know, speaking of names, that there's a name for it — alexinomia.

I think part of the problem here comes from having been exposed to those people who excessively say the name of the person they're talking with — e.g., parents, teachers, and readers of "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

"Likability seems to have emerged as an important personality trait in the late 19th century, when it became closely associated with male business success."

"Before this, people liked or disliked one another, of course, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War, when middle-class men began to see virtue and character as essential to personal advancement, that success in business required projecting likability.... Americans were also taught that being likable was a quality that could be cultivated as a means to get ahead. In 1936, Dale Carnegie’s 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' warned that those who tried too hard to be liked would fail: Theodore Roosevelt’s naturally friendly greetings to everyone he passed, regardless of status, Carnegie noted, had made it impossible not to like him, but Henrietta G., now the 'best liked' counselor at her office, had been isolated until she learned to stop bragging. (Though looking back, we have to wonder: Would Henry G. have needed to hide his accomplishments?).... But as Dale Carnegie might have told [Hillary Clinton], if there is anything worse than being unlikable, it is wanting too badly to be liked.... That Mrs. Clinton lost the nomination in 2008, to a political virtuoso but still a virtual novice, seemed for some illustrative of the troubled relationship between gender and likability in politics. But then she lost in 2016. That voters could see Donald Trump’s rambling and bullying as authenticity seemed proof for many that the likability game was permanently rigged in favor of men.... Likability is associated with an emotional connection between candidate and voter that makes a politician worthy of trust. And yet because that connection is forged almost exclusively through the conduit of mass media, it can never be really about the candidate but only voters’ fantasies about how a politician they can never know ought to be. That women are disadvantaged by a dynamic that emphasizes fantasies over real achievements should perhaps come as no surprise: Popular fantasies about women, sadly, still don’t tend to feature intelligence, expertise and toughness at the negotiating table.... What would it mean if we could reinvent what it is that makes a candidate 'likable'? What if women no longer tried to fit a standard that was never meant for them and instead, we focused on redefining what likability might look like: not someone you want to get a beer with, but, say, someone you can trust to do the work?"

From "Men Invented ‘Likability.’ Guess Who Benefits/It was pushed by Madison Avenue and preached by self-help gurus. Then it entered politics" by Claire Bond Potter (NYT).

Potter fails to make a serious attempt to understand what people who like Donald Trump like about him. She tosses out the Trump hater's aversive summary, "rambling and bullying." Potter purports to be interested in "reinvent[ing]" what likability is, but she never takes the trouble to consider the ways in which Donald Trump has reinvented likability. She does breeze through the historical example of Theodore Roosevelt, though she only looks at him second hand, letting us know how Dale Carnegie saw him — "naturally friendly."

Potter rankles at the contrast between the male Roosevelt and the female ("Henrietta G.") who tries too hard, and she jumps to the feminist question whether the problem people had with Henrietta was her femaleness. Carnegie may have been right. People responded to the naturalness of Roosevelt's interactions and felt put off by the artificiality of H.G.'s trying too hard.

If we reframe likability as a sense that you can trust the other person, the distinction between Roosevelt and Henrietta G. already fits that frame! Roosevelt seemed natural, as if he really was friendly and showing his real self, and Henrietta felt like a phony who was trying to extract something from us.

Now, Trump haters, think about Trump and why the people who like him like him, and think hard. Don't shield yourself from the truth by reflexively interposing Trump-hating ideas like "rambling and bullying." Trump stands up in front of crowds for an hour and more at a time and speaks directly, without a script. You get to see how his mind works. He's a real person. It's weird but it's natural— natural in some way that's available to a 70ish billionaire TV-and-real-estate man from New York City.

By the way, if you're going to study "likability," you ought to also study hateability. It seems to me, the guys who've been winning the Presidency also have hateability. Speaking of trying too hard, maybe female politicians try too hard to expunge or hide any hateability, and that's what makes them seem to lack qualities — Potter's trio is "intelligence, expertise and toughness" — that we sense are crucial in the Leader of the Free World. We're not electing a Friend. We're electing a Protector.

IN THE COMMENTS: Automatic_Wing said:

"You're likeable enough, Hillary" was funny because everyone knew she wasn't.

Let's see it again:



What I notice, watching it again today, is that Hillary was ready with a funny response. The question seems planned, and her response seems to have been practiced, and it is funny. She says "That hurts my feelings" in a mock-feminine way, then adds, sarcastically, "but I'll try to go on." I think the idea was to insinuate that her critics were sexist to talk about likability and to be likable by displaying that she didn't really care about those criticisms. Obama stepped on her little routine. (Paradoxically, that routine of hers was very feminine.) And he was actually kind of mean, saying she was "likable enough," which is to say, not all that likable, certainly not as likable as I am, but I've got so much likablity that I can spend some of it on being kind of an asshole to you, Hillary. Ironically, that ad lib meanness was likable! And it underscored how practiced and phony her effort to please us really was. She was trying too hard, like Dale Carnegie's Henrietta G.

The ceremony — as Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Today, in Japan:



"I swear that I will reflect deeply on the course followed by his majesty, the emperor emeritus, and bear in mind the path trodden by past emperors, and will devote myself to self-improvement."

I'd like to know more about the devotion to "self-improvement." What is the Japanese word and what is the significance of the concept in Japanese culture? The "self-improvement" of the new leader is not an idea that has any prominence when an American takes a political office. Imagine a candidate for President offering to devote himself to self-improvement. Self-improvement? That sounds like an indulgence, a lack of interest in meeting responsibilities. I won't lamely speculate on the possible lack of actual work for the Japanese emperor. I'm going to assume there's a very interesting and government-related concept here that is puzzlingly represented by the English term "self-improvement."

From the Wikipedia article on the Chrysanthemum Throne:

Japan is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world. In much the same sense as the British Crown, the Chrysanthemum Throne is an abstract metonymic concept that represents the monarch and the legal authority for the existence of the government....

And an image of the literal throne:



Here's the Wikipedia article on "Self-help or self-improvement." From the "History" subsection:

"Myers-Briggs was well-positioned, in the mid-'70s, to ride the wave of 'self-actualization,' the trend that brought us a dizzying array of personal growth programs and gurus."

"The new publisher offered the test not just to schools and corporations but to consumers as a 'self-test'—individuals could buy the assessment and grade it themselves. This was a new market for such tests, which previously had only been sold to organizations, with the answer sheets sent back to the publisher for grading. The DIY option was perfect for the 'me' decade. People who felt unfulfilled could send off for a little green booklet with a self-scoring guide. Like reading a horoscope or doing a love quiz in Cosmopolitan, bored suburbanites could fill out the Myers-Briggs chart during the commercial breaks of Kojak and discover their 'true type.' By 1979, more than a million Myers-Briggs answer sheets had been sold. The story of the Myers-Briggs follows the history of personality testing in the 20th century. Earlier self-improvement ideas, like those of Dale Carnegie, focused on doing the right thing. After the 1960s, the focus shifted to being the right thing. Neurolinguistic programming and self-hypnosis suggested that we could change ourselves. Myers-Briggs gave a softer option: It would help us know ourselves, uncritically. But the knowledge is a mirage. Reading through the questions is like looking at a script for a cold reading. Every answer could apply to everyone to some degree, possibly changing depending on mood."

From "Myers-Briggs Is Bunk/Why doesn't that stop people from taking the enduringly popular personality test?" (Reason)(reviewing the new book "The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing").

"Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are."

The most highlighted sentence in the Kindle edition of the Steve Jobs bio.

Second most highlighted: "People DO judge a book by its cover... We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”

Here's the most highlighted one that I also highlighted: "People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint." It's actually the 6th most highlighted. It's a quote from Steve Jobs. The first 2 above are not Steve Jobs quotes. They are, respectively, by Nolan Bushnell (Jobs's role model, the founder of Atari) and Mike Markkula (first big Apple investor).

ADDED: Here— chez Amazon — is a list of the most highlighted passages of all time. #1 is: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them." Oh, man. I guess obviousness brings out the old highlighter (among readers of Suzanne Collins books). She's got the second most-highlighted passage as well: "It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart." It's fun to read these things because you're seeing... something about a certain type of reader. #13 shows what leaped out at readers of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People":

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.

Ha ha. Think about that next time you're out to manipulate people, you little weasel.

All about Malcolm Gladwell.

Rachel Donadio writes:

Gladwell has become an all-out international phenomenon — and has helped create a highly contagious hybrid genre of nonfiction, one that takes a nonthreatening and counterintuitive look at pop culture and the mysteries of the everyday. In the past year, several other books in the Gladwell vein have appeared. They include the best-selling "Freakonomics," a breezy collection of case studies by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, and the journalist Stephen Dubner (the pair write an occasional "Freakonomics" column for The Times Magazine); "The Wisdom of Crowds," a business book for thinking people in which the New Yorker writer James Surowiecki argues that groups are collectively smarter and more innovative than individuals; and "Everything Bad Is Good for You," Steven Johnson's case that pop culture is becoming increasingly sophisticated....

For all their resonance and success, Gladwell's books have also been criticized, most often for demonstrating, or encouraging, lazy thinking. In a scathing review in The New Republic, the judge and author Richard Posner found "Blink" full of banalities and contradictions, "written like a book intended for people who do not read books."

Well, what's wrong with clearly explaining ideas to people who don't want to make the effort to read more scholarly things? But it's more than just vividly written explanation. He transforms social science material into a positive message:

"I'm by nature an optimist. I can't remember the last time I wrote a story which could be described as despairing," he said. "I don't believe in character. I believe in the effect of the immediate impact of environment and situation on people's behavior."...

Although pitched as descriptive, Gladwell's books are essentially prescriptive. Trust your instincts! You too may be (or can become) a connector, maven or salesman! Gladwell's dazzling arguments ultimately offer reassurance. Indeed, he seems a contemporary incarnation of a recurring figure in the American experience, one who comes with encouraging news: You can make a difference, you have the capacity to change. Gladwell may be the Dale Carnegie, or perhaps the Norman Vincent Peale, of the iPod generation. But where Carnegie in his 1936 book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," instructed readers how to understand their customers and flatter people into liking them, and Peale in his 1952 "Power of Positive Thinking" offered watered-down Christian palliatives, Gladwell offers optimism through demystification: to understand how things work is to have control over them.

So, to paraphrase Posner: It's written like a book intended for people who read self-help books. Do we need to start being embarrassed that we like Gladwell so much?