No, I was not reading Milton when this stream of thought originated.
I was taking a break from preparing my slides for my Cornell Zoom presentation (I was looking forward to visiting the campus, so could not resist reminiscing about my 1990 graduation), on Quantum Integer Programming (QuIP), when I received this email:
Sridhar-
I would like to start this email by first saying that my entire organization was thrilled with the videos you sent us. From our Executive Director to our Manager of Community Outreach. Thank you so much for sharing these with the OPO community.
We rolled this out beginning April 1, 2020.
Training:
We have an organ and tissue department. Both have a manager of Family Care. Family Care for both are responsible for approaching families, supporting them during the donation process, and aftercare. I trained Kevin Shaw, Manager of Family Care, Tissue using your power point and flow chart/scripting that you provided with the videos.
Organ: Family Care Coordinators were trained by me in a face to face training session. I have 4 full time FCCs and 1 contract FCC and 2 part time family support individuals. All seven were trained.
Tissue: Family Care Specialists were trained by Kevin Shaw in a face to face training session. There are 4 full time FCSs and 4 part time FCSs that were trained at that time.
Warmly,
Dawn M. McCormack, B.S.W.
Manager, Family Care, Organ
What can be more satisfying than offering video nudges – what can be more maximally inverse than When Death becomes Life! — that gain institutional acceptance with such enthusiasm?
Not Milton, but Toni Morrison. From The Source of Self-Regard:
I am just wondering. How to reimagine paradise. The superfluity of working or fighting for rewards of food or luxury has dwindling currency these days. It is hard not to notice how much attention has always been given to hell rather than heaven. Dante’s Inferno beats out Paradiso every time.
I had re-read recently what Schrodinger endorsed in his spirited conclusion of What is Life?:
Vedanta’s metaphysical doctrine, Atman = Brahman, where the unfortunate illusion of individual consciousness disappears as the self merges with universal reality.
I am not surprised that Schrodinger was fired up about Vedanta. After all, this is just another instance of operating in an imaginary non-physical realm!😏
My modest goal, complementing the above, is to achieve transcendence that is measured in our physical world. 😉
Not a new concept, it turns out. Ancient.
In Sanskrit, जीवन्मुक्ति jivanmukti, wherein jiva is the individual living soul, and mukti – like moksa – is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.
I reinterpret it as: Liberation while Living.🤷🏽♂️
In 2015, while living on Skating Pond in Weston, I drove over to nearby Walden Pond, less than 15 minutes away (in my Ferrari!). Thoreau (who would not be amused at my lack of respect for the environment):
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you fresh prospect every hour. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world.
Indeed. SmartOps. OrganJet. Nudge Videos. Quantum Integer Programming.
So, what is my conception of Paradise on Earth?
Where time is anything but money.
To be free of imaginative restraints.
To be inventive simply by casting a glance from a different angle.
To infuriate Puritans by actually being happy.😊
